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I've been reading this forum for some time now, but only today I managed to create an account and post something. I'm currently in the middle of a process to change my career, but lots of doubts have striked me.

A little bit of background: I'm 23 years old, from Brazil. I have a degree in Software Engineering. I was thinking about going into a MSc program in Computer Science, however by the end of my graduation I have noticed that my passion was not actually on computing, but on computing applied to other sciences, such as physics and math.

Since then, I'm thinking about going back to school and get and undergraduate degree in physics and pursue a MSc and Phd in physics. The thing is, I would have to go through at least 3 years of undergrad, plus 2 of MSc, and 4 of Phd. By the time I finish, I'll be around 33 years old. I'm afraid that would be too old to start my academic career in physics. Is that a reasonable concern of mine? Am I too old?

In my university there is a program of physics with concentration in computational physics, where I could apply all my knowledge in computing (which is pretty solid) to solve physics problems, while learning physics. Also, the department lacks good programmers, so it could be a good opportunity for me.

I'm just afraid of restarting and ending up badly. I'm good at math and physics, never had any trouble understanding them, but people say that a physics career is very rough, and most people end up doing something else (such as software development).

Finally, would it be too risky? My concerns are realistic? Would I have too much trouble finding a job after? Note that I plan on moving to US or Canada sometime in the future. Would it be a good choice to change?